By Henri de Marne/Home repair: Laminate flooring 101
Q. Do you have any recommendations on laminate flooring brands? This will be going into a basement that will be exposed to heavy traffic (kids, pets, etc.)
A. Laminate floors are resistant to damage, but if damage occurs, you are out of luck. Wood laminates, such as Pergo, are popular, but cannot be refinished if they're damaged, as the laminate is either thin or only photographed on a wood base with a polymer finish.
By contrast, engineered flooring is made of thin, real wood, adhered to a wood core. It comes in two types: a floating floor that is laid over a foam pad or individual pieces that are either glued or nailed to the subfloor. It can be refinished to a certain extent. There are a number of engineered floors on the market. Your best bet is to go to a flooring store and take a look at what's available and compare with laminate floors.
Q. We have a two-story home built in 1977. We used a dark stain and satin finish on the interior doors, casings and mopboards. Now we would like to update and paint them white. What process would you suggest? Do I sand first and then prime with Kilz to prevent bleed-through? Should the Kilz be oil-based? Can I paint a latex paint over the oil primer?
A. A light sanding is sufficient to break any remaining sheen on the dark stain. Then you can simply apply a white primer, although Kilz or any other stain-covering coating is also fine to use. Both oil- or water-based stain killers are OK. You may find that you need more than one coat of finish white paint to obtain the results you want. You can use a latex paint over an oil-based primer.
Q. In your response to a reader's question regarding his plugged-up garage-floor drain, you wrote “A better drainage solution is to slope the floor three inches from the back to the garage door.” My 17-year-old house has this type of “drainage system,” but the problem is that I'm located in the upper Midwest.
Since insulating and heating my garage, snow melting off my vehicles will make its way down the floor, stopping at the garage door, and then freeze when it meets the cold temperatures at the base of the overhead door. When closing the door, the ice buildup will occasionally cause the door to reverse because it senses an obstruction. On one occasion, the door was actually frozen to the floor. Apart from having to manually break up the ice that forms or using rock salt to melt it, how would you deal with this issue?
This isn't due to snow-covered vehicles parked in the garage, but to small amounts of snow and ice that accumulate under the vehicles each time they are driven after a snowfall and then returned to the garage.
A. This situation is a common problem that needs regular attention. Instead of allowing the melted snow to build up to where it interferes with the operation of the door, use a snow shovel or floor-scraping tool to remove the ice on a daily basis. That is what those of us who live in the North need to do.
You should not use rock salt on concrete, which will cause it to deteriorate. It is best to use calcium chloride or similar products sold as “safe for use on concrete.” I suggest that you sprinkle a small amount of calcium chloride on the area where the icing occurs, including the apron of the slab outside the garage door on a regular basis. I hope you are aware that heating a garage can result in hastening the rusting of cars.
Q. Thanks for your response. I did not explain the problem properly and confused you. Here is my house information. It's a two-story home with the heating fan in the basement and the A/C condenser outside. The ground floor has a living room, dining room, etc., and all the bedrooms are on the upper floor. I have two full baths on the top floor. The attic has proper ventilation, and recently a contractor installed a ridge vent, too.
The problem of air coming out of the bathroom vent was there before, and is still there, after installing this ridge vent. There is a pipe connected to the roof to send out the exhaust-fan air. There is a covered vent (or something like that) on the roof for this pipe. That means exhaust fans are installed and designed to send the air out and not into the attic. The guest-bathroom exhaust fan is connected to the pipe directly. The master-bath exhaust fan travels a foot or two horizontally in the attic and connects to the vertical pipe that sends out the air. I have no mold issue in this bathroom. But every time I turn on the master-bath exhaust fan, I can feel the air coming out of the heating register located on the floor level. I can feel the air coming out of the register whether I close or open the bathroom door. The problem is only with this fan and not the other one. Recently, I removed the light cover of this fan and noticed that the light cover is catching rust. Does that mean water is entering into the light through the pipe connected to the ceiling? Or is it catching the steam (when we take hot shower) and causing the rust?
I hope I explained the problem correctly this time. I can take some pictures and send them if necessary.
After reading your e-mail reply, I noticed you are right. The air is coming out of the heating register only when the bathroom door is closed. When it's open, I cannot feel it at all. Is it OK?
A. There is no need to send me photos; your explanation is clear. As I mentioned in my earlier reply, when you run the fan in the master bathroom, and the door is shut, the fan causes negative pressure that is equalized by drawing air through the duct system. Because the heat and air-conditioning ducts are in the floor, the air you feel is drawn from other rooms or the basement. The solution is to have an inch cut off the bottom of the bathroom door so the make-up air would come from the hallway and not from colder areas. It may still feel cold to you. This may happen in one bathroom and not the other one, because the door in one may be tighter than the other.
The rust you saw in the ceiling light means that condensation is running down the exhaust duct that vents through the roof. This happens in all cold climates. As I have mentioned many times over the years, bathroom and kitchen fans should be vented horizontally, just above the attic's floor joists, through gable walls, and never through roofs, soffits, soffit vents or ridge vents. It should also be surrounded with insulation to minimize condensation. Another mistake is to connect both bathroom fans into the same exhaust pipe; this can often cause the venting of one bathroom into the other.
Q. I have purchased a home built in 1962 and would like to change the color of the ceramic-tile floor. In excellent condition, it is made of 1-inch square blocks. Would it be possible to paint them? Could it be refinished in some other way? I would prefer not to remove it.
A. You would have to use an epoxy paint. The existing tile floor will need to be thoroughly cleaned and slightly abraded for the epoxy to bond. Positive results are hard to guarantee.
Q. I am writing about a bee problem. I use a small pest company for my termite inspections, etc., as I think you recommend instead of the larger organizations. I had a service contract with one of them and did not feel they were doing a good job, especially when I had carpenter bees on my deck and they just kept spraying and did not notice the hole in one of the posts, which we closed up and stained over and then never had the problem again.
This year, when my pest man came over, I showed him a small beehive in the bottom of a vent over my garage. After inspecting my house for termites (no problem this time), he returned to look into the bee problem. He showed me markings on the side of the house, under the eaves, and said it was from bees and that he needed to have this sticky mesh inserted to stop them from returning. I had this done, in addition to adding a new vent on the side of the house and other small jobs.
However, I felt that he charged me an exorbitant amount for such a small amount of time and materials used for the repair work he did. When I discussed this with my neighbor, he said his pest company came each year and sprayed under all the eaves around the house, and his pest guy said that if you add mesh, the bees just go to another part of the house.
Is it necessary to have someone spray each year, as my neighbor does. Was the work I had done a waste of time and money?
A. Anyone who has a serious bee or wasp problem should consider having a trusted pest-management professional (PMP) spray the house, especially the south, east and west sides (activity on the north side is rare) in May. It should take care of the bug season. If bees or yellow jackets have entered the walls through small cavities, the PMP will spray a chemical into them. Exposed nests will receive a residual pesticide treatment that will last a long time or be treated with Wasp-Freeze, which lowers their body temperature and kills them.
The mesh applied to your house sounds similar to flypaper. When the insect lands on it before entering the nest, it is stuck. It does not seem to be effective in the long run.
Ÿ Henri de Marne was a remodeling contractor in Washington, D.C., for many years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in care of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via e-mail at henridemarne@gmavt.net.
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